About Us

AMOS (Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems) was created in December 1983 by Bill Collin, at that time CEO of the Ateliers de la Meuse, a company specialized in heavy mechanical equipment.

AMOS was devoted to optomechanical developments for professional astronomy and space instrumentation.
AMOS has first been active in the development of space simulators and produced all simulators for the CSL (Liege Space Centre) and a few companies like Spacebel Instrumentation and ETCA (now Thales Alenia Space_ETCA) as well as some simulators for ESA (European Space Agency) and later on for ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation).

In parallel, the company increased its facilities for optical fabrication: grinding and polishing machines, ion beam facility, and started to produce optical surfaces, essentially mirrors for astronomy.

At the beginning of this century, AMOS produced many studies for ESO (European Southern Observatory), resulting in the development of seeing monitors, and finally the Auxiliary Telescope System for the Cerro Paranal Interferometer. For those projects, mirrors were polished in the AMOS premises. Polishing facilities were developed to reach capacities of up to 3m diameter.

In parallel, the company was active in producing MGSE (Mechanical Ground Support Equipment) and OGSE (Optical Ground Support Equipment) for ESA or prime contractors preparing ESA missions. During that period, multiple derotators were produced, for the 8m telescopes on Cerro Paranal, for Gemini and for GTC in Canary Islands.
For projects that required the highest precision, AMOS created a subsidiary: Nanoshape, equipped with high precision diamond turning machines. In 2008, Nanoshape was integrated into AMOS.

In 2010, AMOS opened an office (Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems Inc) in College Station Texas, in close relationship with Texas A&M University.

From 2007 to 2011, AMOS was active in the development of MAST (Multi-Application Solar Telescope for USO - Udaipur Solar Observatory - in India, interferometric telescopes for MRO (Magdalena Ridge Observatory), a 3.6m astronomical telescope for ARIES (Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in Nainital, India), a wide field 2.5m telescope for the Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre (Aragon, Spain) and a wide field telescope for Pan Starrs (Hawaii, USA).
Besides the production of telescopes, AMOS polished many mirrors of the space missions GAIA and Sentinel 2 and built a lot of extremely precise components by diamond turning for various customers.

ON FOCUS - Diamond Turning

Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) manufactures small optical pieces by diamond turning mainly for infrared applications but also, after post polishing, for visible or ultraviolet. Concave or convex mirrors up to 500mm can be machined with extreme asphericities.... More

LASTNEWS

Press News - 24th June 2015

AMOS SIGNS TWO MAJOR AGREEMENTS IN CHINA
During H.M. King Philippe’s state visit in China this week, AMOS has signed two agreements with major Chinese players in the field of optical...